by Angie Fox
I stiffened in his grip. “We don’t know that either of them murdered Barbara.”
“Process of elimination, babe,” Brett said, tucking his long wand into a carrying case by the door.
“We can’t just leave them here,” I said. “Once we escape, we can let the police sort it out.”
“It’s dangerous to go look for a couple of murderers,” Cash warned.
“You want to go with me?” I asked. I wouldn’t mind having company. Unless Cash was the killer, but I didn’t think he was.
Maybe I’d just made a big mistake.
“I’ll work with Brett to get us out of here,” Cash said, ending the debate. “I have priorities.”
I did, too, and every life mattered. “I’ll search the second and third floors for the Burowskis, then meet you on the first.”
“Just make it quick,” Brett warned. “And if you see that sopping wet ghost, run.”
“I also have to go into the basement and get Ellis,” I murmured.
“Keep it to half an hour,” Cash prodded. “The smartest thing we can do is get out of here as soon as we can.”
“I’ll make it work,” I promised, checking my watch.
“Here,” Brett said, digging into his case and coming up with what appeared to be a walkie-talkie. “This is one of our spare radios. You can use it to communicate with us.” He turned a knob, and static spurted out, followed by more knob turning, and then silence. “Hit the red button to talk. Hit the green button to tune in to our Ghost Hunter App. We’re beta testing it on our B frequency.”
“Thanks,” I said, taking it. I hardly needed an app to talk to the dead, but I would take the radio.
“Our radios have the admin version of the app,” Cash explained like it was a special thing. “It’ll give you another channel to talk to us if you get too much static on the first.” He pushed the green button, and lo and behold, the line was clear and free of static. “It’s quiet for now, but if there are any spirits around, you’ll probably want to avoid the green button and call us on the main channel.”
Brett pushed the red button on his radio. “Boo,” he said, his voice clear on my end. “Admin signal covers at least a half mile, so you’ll be set here.”
“Thanks,” I said, glad to have two ways to reach them. “You guys really do think of everything.”
“We’re scientists,” Cash said as if that explained everything.
I walked with them down the length of the south hall, toward the main staircase.
“Tom?” I called into each room. “Joan?”
Only I saw no ghostly light, nor any sign of the Burowskis. At least the night-vision goggles made it easier to see in the dark.
“You really should come with us,” Brett said, pausing at the main staircase. “We’ll even go down with you to get Officer Wydell.”
“It’s fine,” I said, getting a creepy feeling. I’d spoken too fast earlier. I’d told them where Ellis was. That was really bad if they were the killers.
Ellis could take care of himself, but still…
I glanced down the north side of the hallway and caught a faint glow coming from under one of the doors.
“Want to check out one more room with me?” I asked.
“No,” Cash said. “We have a job to do.”
They did, and so did I.
“I’ll be fine,” I said to them and to myself. I could handle this. If our plan with Brett’s device worked, we’d be out soon. “We’ll make this work.”
“Don’t jinx it,” Brett warned.
“Ha,” I said, brushing off his concern, not wanting to think about how close we were, and how that was when things usually fell apart.
18
This was the right thing to do.
If we were leaving, I needed to get Tom and Joan out with us. Yes, they might be killers, but ironically, that made it even more important to find them. If they were guilty, I couldn’t just leave them here to destroy evidence. They could break into the boiler room and contaminate the crime scene. They could wipe down the banisters in the haunted staircase. Worse, they could cover tracks we didn’t even know they’d left.
Plus, call me crazy, but I didn’t want to leave them to the mercy of Dr. Anderson.
The first two rooms I passed lay dark. The night-vision glasses came in handy as I investigated each. The first appeared to be a dental examination room. If the dust on the floor was any indication, I’d say the room hadn’t seen any living visitors in quite some time. It appeared abandoned by the dead as well. At least for now.
The second room held two long tables cluttered with dusty beakers and lab trays that were littered with debris and the occasional dead bug.
The next room glowed with ghostly energy. I slowed, pulling off my night-vision goggles before entering.
A woman lay on a hospital gurney parked in front of the large window wall facing the front of the property. Rain pelted the glass, and I could see she’d been tied down with canvas straps. Tubes hooked into each of her wrists and also her neck. A dark liquid passed into her, pumped by a metal machine parked at her side. It made an awful whirring noise, and for a second, I thought she lay dead.
Then her fingers twitched.
I stiffened and scanned the room for the person who had done this to her. No doubt Dr. Anderson or Nurse Claymore.
But we were alone.
“Hello,” I said to the helpless woman, my voice warbly as I approached her.
She had to be in her seventies or eighties, her cheekbones protruding harshly, her skin deeply creased and spotted with the marks of a hard life. Her ice gray hair was as long as a young girl’s. It tangled on the stained sheet under her and reached limply toward the bare linoleum floor.
“Are you all right?” I asked gently, helplessly.
Of course she wasn’t all right. She was hooked up to Lord knew what, in an asylum known for cruel treatments. She didn’t even have a pillow, for goodness’ sake, or a proper hospital gown. She wore a simple white nightgown stained with old blood at the collar.
I reached out to smooth her hair, then thought better of it. The shock of it would not be a comfort.
“Perhaps I could…unhook you?” I offered. I didn’t know the first thing about needles or what this transfusion machine was supposed to do, and I certainly wouldn’t touch anything without her permission.
Then again, she was already dead. What harm could it do?
The woman sat straight up with a jerk, and I nearly had a heart attack. Her wrists shook against the straps tying them down, and her head whipped toward the window, to the wind shaking the glass, the rain pounding hard.
“Should I…untie you?” I offered.
She turned her head slowly. Her eyes were milky and expressionless, her gaze directed straight at me. “They’re coming for you, dear.” She began to cackle. The bed creaked as she flailed her arms and kicked her legs against her bonds. “You!” She twisted toward me and pointed her finger, the nails long and yellow.
“I’m fine,” I insisted, because I wanted it to be true. I wasn’t sure if I was trying to calm her or myself.
She stopped her laughing as quickly as she’d started. She just stared at me for a moment.
“See?” I asked, keeping my voice as even as I could, trying to ignore the whirr of the machine, the loud pounding of my heart in my chest. “We’re all good.”
She patted her hands on the bed railings, her nails clicking against the metal as she lay back down. She stared at the ceiling.
“All better,” I coaxed, not about to offer to untie her again. She wasn’t like the patients I’d met upstairs. It seemed this woman did have some sort of acute psychological issues. “You’re safe with me,” I assured her.
Her mouth tilted in a serene smile, and she turned her head to look at me. “I’m going to miss you when they take you away.”
I stiffened at the warning as she gently closed her eyes and appeared to find sleep, or at least calm in a place I did not
want to visit.
“Miss,” a voice called from the doorway, taking about a year off my life. Nurse Claymore swept into the room, frowning. “You shouldn’t be in here.”
“Hello,” I said, startled. I’d been hoping to run into Dr. Anderson’s unsmiling second-in-command. I turned back to the woman on the bed. “I was just…comforting her.”
While she scared the living daylights out of me.
“She has everything she needs,” Nurse Claymore stated. She surveyed the room. “Where is your friend?”
Ah, Frankie. “Nowhere near Bruno Scalieri, I can assure you,” I said. At least I hoped.
“I appreciate your candor,” she said, drawing up next to me, her clipboard acting like a shield between us.
“I heard what happened,” I told her apologetically. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience. You have better things to do than deal with Frankie.” We both did.
She drew a deep breath. “Thank you.” She shook her head slightly. “I would not presume to blame you for the actions of your man.”
It took everything I had not to correct her on that one.
“I didn’t mean to intrude on your treatment,” I explained, “but I saw her alone with all these tubes in her and it worried me.”
She turned to her patient. “Rest assured Mrs. Keel is in good hands. I know it appears strange. Barbaric even, to someone of your youth, with your lack of medical training. But transfusions have been proven to help cure conditions of the mind.”
“You’re giving her new blood?” I asked, cringing.
That certainly wouldn’t help. It could have even been what had killed her.
Nurse Claymore checked the readings on the machine and wrote them down on her clipboard. “I’ll ask you to leave now.”
Not yet. “I understand you’re a doctor,” I said, noticing her flinch when I said it.
“I’m not to be addressed as such,” she said stiffly. Her gaze darted to me. “I don’t have the title. And I don’t appreciate you speaking my business.”
I’d assumed she would be proud. “It’s an accomplishment. A powerful thing.” Especially for a woman of her time. She was a revolutionary. “You shouldn’t hide it. You could change how people think around here.”
She could show them what female doctors were really made of. And if she was following orders she didn’t agree with, she could stand up for her opinions too. Perhaps she could even help us escape this place.
Her expression went cold. “You’d be surprised at how little I can change.”
Maybe. Maybe not. “You don’t always have to do what Dr. Anderson says,” I ventured over the scratching of her pencil on the medical chart and the whirr of the machine. “I mean, you have the same medical training he does, right?”
“I do not have the same rights as a male doctor,” she snapped. “Please don’t pretend I am at liberty to make the same decisions.”
Yikes. Okay.
I hadn’t been able to help the woman in the tub or even Juliet’s friend Loretta. But I could say something now. “You can look and see for yourself what treatments help people and which ones hurt them.”
She didn’t look up from her notes. She just kept writing. “Mrs. Keel is very sick.” She glanced to the woman lying motionless on the gurney, with barely contained disgust. “She killed one of my nurses in the water-therapy room.”
“Oh.” I took a reflexive step back, remembering the ghost who had risen out of the tub. “Did your nurse have long dark hair? A thin frame?” And a glare that says she wants to tear you apart with her bare hands?
The lead in the nurse’s pencil snapped. She closed her eyes for a brief second as the ruined end of the pencil pressed against her chart. “Mary haunts a tub in the therapy room. Kindly leave her in peace.”
How terrible for her to have her friend so close yet be able to do nothing for her. “I’m sorry this happened.”
“Thank you,” she said simply, drawing another pencil from the pocket of her crisp white uniform. “I chose this life.” She began writing again. “I choose it still. But it is…hard.”
No kidding.
“You don’t have to keep doing this,” I told her. “You could help your patients go into the light instead.”
“I’m needed,” she said stoically. She finished with her clipboard and held it down to her side. “I don’t need to be in charge, and I don’t need to be addressed as doctor. I’m content,” she added, not fooling anybody. “But I know you want to leave, and I am sorry Dr. Anderson is keeping you here.”
“To tell you the truth, I did want to get the heck out of here at first. But now I want to help the souls who are trapped here. I’d like to help them move on. You too, if you’re willing.”
She tilted her head and looked at me as if she were seeing me for the first time. “Bless your heart.”
I was about to ask her what she meant by that. Because in the South, it could be anything from thank you to you’re a few crumbs short of a biscuit.
Then the radio at my belt crackled and Cash’s voice came through.
“Verity, I think we’ve found a good window!”
I scrambled for my belt and the volume button. But there was only one setting: loud.
“Get everybody rounded up and we should be able to bust out of here!” Cash gushed.
I hit the green button to turn on the ghost app and hopefully silence the radio.
This was bad. Here I was assuring the good nurse that I wanted to stay and help, and then Cash had to talk about our plan to break out from under the nose of her boss.
Nurse Claymore had heard everything.
Of course she’d heard everything.
“Ah,” I said, my brain scrambling to explain. “I do want to help the spirits here.” That part was true. “But I want to help my living friends, too.”
Her mouth formed a thin line. “There is no escape,” she said, voice stiff, eyes hard. “There never has been.”
Then Nurse Claymore’s eyes went wide, and for a second, I thought she was about to call down Dr. Anderson to get me. I followed her gaze and saw the last traces of her patient disappear.
Son of a gun. “Do you know where Mrs. Keel went?”
“No,” she said coldly. The metal needles on the end of the tubes clattered onto the floor, one pumping out a pool of blood, the other making a high-pitched sucking noise. Nurse Claymore’s jaw tightened. “The doctor is spending so much energy to rein in the living, he’s losing control of the dead.”
She said it like it was my fault.
If that was true, at least we’d bought Mrs. Keel some time away from that machine.
The ghost-hunter app beeped, and the green light flickered like mad. I was really starting to dislike being in constant communication.
Then I heard Ellis’s voice on the other end of the radio. “What are we going to do, Frankie?”
Oh no. I scrambled for my belt once more. The ghost-hunter app must have tapped into the microphone on Ellis’s phone, the one it used to listen for ghost frequencies. Ellis needed to check the permissions on his phone apps. So did I, but that didn’t help us now.
I heard the sound of Ellis’s crutch scraping against the autopsy table down in the morgue. Cripes. I had to turn this thing off!
Brett had said his radio carried the administrative version of the app. Evidently, it was collecting information from other phones running the app. There had to be some kind of crossed wires. At the very least, I should be able to turn it off. Ellis’s voice came through again. “You know, we’ve never really talked.”
Nurse Claymore looked ready to spit nails. “More friends?” she asked. Before I could answer, she added, “Please join them wherever they are, and kindly stay out of my examination rooms.”
“Wait.” I wanted to talk about what kind of power Dr. Anderson was using up and if she could tell me more about the patients we might be able to set free.
But her image was already fading. “I have a procedure I need to prep
are for,” she said before she disappeared entirely.
My blood went cold as I wondered who she would work on next. I mean, I could escape this place—I hoped—but there were so many who couldn’t.
“Smoke,” the ghost app chirped.
“No, thanks,” Ellis said to Frankie. “Although I could use a shot of whiskey. Bet you could, too,” he added with a chuckle.
I pressed the green button. “Ellis?” I asked.
He gave no response.
This app connection definitely needed more work. And I had to get a handle on this radio. I couldn’t let it go off whenever. I had to be stealthy at times. And it would help if Cash or Brett or Ellis would stop broadcasting our plans all over kingdom come.
A cool breeze brushed my arm as the temperature in the examination room dropped. I was about to get a visit from another ghost, or maybe this was Nurse Claymore’s way of getting me out of her examination room. Either way, I was leaving. I still needed to find the Burowskis and fetch Ellis before the drowned ghost who had gone after us—Mary—regained her energy.
“I’m going,” I said to thin air. “I’m going!”
The hallway lay deserted. A few doors down, I spotted a door marked Janitorial.
Good enough.
I twisted the cold metal knob and let myself in. The room stood dark, deserted by the living and the dead. Metal shelves held bottles of cleaning liquids, most evaporated to dust. I sat on an overturned mop bucket and took my first really good look at the radio Cash had given to me.
The box was simple, almost too basic—a rectangle with a circular speaker and two modes: radio and ghost app. The blinking green light showed I had it on the ghost app, which Cash said was in beta testing. They’d been monitoring anyone using it, finding glitches. And this had to be the worst possible one.
A small screen on the back of the device showed me a readout of what appeared on Ellis’s app. A series of lines along the bottom pulsed and jumped with ghostly energy.
Ellis’s voice came through again. “I don’t even know how to start, Frank. I’m not usually much for sharing.”
And on the other end, Ellis’s screen flashed a single word as his app’s mechanical voice chirped it out loud, “Don’t.”